CALL ME BELOVED

First, I’m sorry for leaving you behind.
I thought I could hide you there,
safe in some basket like Moses
oblivious, gentle down the Nile,
instead I dragged you on a leash
behind our car, and we really have
come so far – haven’t we?

and God you’re so small – so proud
of all those coffin-like places we’ve hid,
breathless, quiet, and still so
maybe this time, nobody will find you, like
the time you ran away with olives and a
fucking can opener; how they laughed
when you skulked back home, and how

it was never because we were scared,
in that firehouse parking lot,
back hidden behind the pillar –
you didn’t give up because
it was dark, or you were cold;
you’ve never truly told
how much self-hatred burned
inside little four-year-old you
during our resigned march back,
just because you couldn’t work
the can opener alone.

We know how alone, feels,
afraid to change this all, again –
tried the relocation cure before,
but we never could run far enough.
And if our body is a temple
then we’re scouring these halls,
tossing tables and exorcising memories
like moneylenders, casting out demons
devouring those ugliest scraps of us
they can secret away with – we’re
fighting the slow, anemic fade;
lets trash this hotel room.
Run up the fucking bill.

Maybe we can work together,
pick apart the carcass of
our shared grief like vultures,
sniff out the core of the anger,
pulling and plucking the offal
from between the ribs, glistening,
bloody trophies in our beaks.

We’ve got no deadname to bury,
we’re keeping it. It’s ours. But
I feel as though our bedroom
has become a morgue, we wake
each day to a new body, now
too many to hide or explain,
and we’re tired of disclosing
all of those truths buried, there,
unspoken somewhere in the pile.

Maybe we can work together,
pick apart the carcasses of
everybody we’ve been. I won’t
leave you alone, this time,
and maybe we can sniff out
that core of lightness, in there –
I know you’ve felt it, too,
whatever weak glow that’s lit
our way, keeping us warm,
or

was that you?
holding the light, too?
So small, and God,

it’s hard, stitching new narratives
when our story is sewn cheesecloth,
riddled with gaps and holes burned
big enough for your light to shine
through, casting constellations
through cigarette burns I made
stubbing out lit cherries,
trying to twist out our most
painful parts – leaving behind
only ashes, late-night phantoms
and fading circle scars on our arms.

It’s okay. It makes sense to cry,
how all our other classmates
in first grade art class coloring
can imagine themselves grown-up
but when we try to picture a face
or a future, one with us in it,
you see nothing. nothing. nothing.

nothing there. And I am sorry
I’ve left you latchkey, just some
empty chair – I’m just arriving,
I’ve figured out, why you were
afraid in first grade, picturing
empty faces; blank spaces, but

maybe we can work together?
Pick apart the self-hatred
from who we are, I promise
there’s no more need to hide –
nobody laughs when we come home,
anymore; if the worst happens,
now I can work the can opener.